Skye Blyth-Whitelock (they/them) - Integrative Counsellor
About the Therapist
Hi, I'm Skye and I am a queer, white, middle class, non-binary Buddhist, who is on the spectrum. I am also a qualified integrative counsellor, registered member of the British Association for Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP), registered reflective parenting group facilitator and grief tender. Welcome!
Life can be beautiful and it can also be hard. It can be beautiful when you feel connected to yourself, to others and to the environment around you, and when you are involved in practices that bring you meaning, joy and nourishment. It can be hard when you have experienced difficulties in your family growing up, when traumatic things happen to you, when your relationships now are not what you’d want them to be, when you feel lost and without meaning or purpose, and when you feel overwhelmed by the injustice and violence of the human world. There are many more things that can make life beautiful and that can make it painful and through counselling we can make space for all of it, to honour the beauty and find ways to discover more of it and to explore the pain and struggle together, maybe to find a way through it, maybe to find a way to be with and to tend to it and to yourself when it’s calling for your attention. As a counsellor and as a person who also experiences all of this, my approach is to be alongside you in solidarity and with care, warmth and empathy, so that you don’t have to navigate it alone. I take a whole person, integrative approach that affirms all of your characteristics, identities and experiences and incorporates your body, mind, heart and soul.
I see clients online on Zoom or in person, in a therapy room in central Brighton or outdoors in parks, the city or by the seafront in East Brighton. I provide short-term (minimum 12 sessions), long-term and open-ended counselling.
I work with adults with a range of experiences, including (but not limited to) abuse, trauma, bereavement, loss, grief, big life changes, existential crisis, isolation, despair, depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, systemic oppression and violence that impacts you as an individual (e.g. homophobia, transphobia, racism), and climate crisis.
I welcome working with all clients and have a particular interest in working with LGBTQIA+ people, young adults aged 18 - 25, neurodivergent people, and refugees and migrants.
If you think we might work well together, then please do get in touch. I look forward to hearing from you.
Warmly, Skye (they/them)
My Therapeutic Practice
As an integrative counsellor, I draw upon various therapeutic approaches, depending on the needs of each client, as they emerge and change moment to moment. This may include:
- Attachment-based: exploring the ways you relate to me and to others, based on your experiences of relationship with your early caregivers, and seeking to develop secure, stable relationships;
- Body-based: developing somatic awareness and establishing your body as a source of wisdom, safety and grounding, to be listened to and to support the integration of trauma;
- Existential: focusing on the inner anxieties and conflicts that we all experience as humans in this world, through issues such as personal freedom and responsibility, death, isolation, and finding and making meaning;
- Feminist: understanding the context of violence, oppression and marginalisation (not related solely to sex or gender) that impact you and prioritising your self-knowledge, agency and empowerment;
- Person-centred: affirming you as a whole person, with all the resources and capacities you need to grow and change, given the right conditions;
- Psychodynamic: exploring your unconscious communications and ways of understanding the world, based on your early childhood experiences;
- Queer theory: deconstructing and challenging the traditional norms around gender and sexuality and supporting liberation from their oppressive power structures;
- Transpersonal: incorporating the spiritual and transcendent in our work together.
I work relationally, meaning that the counsellor-client relationship that is developed is really important to us being able to work well together and for you, as the client, to feel safe enough to explore issues that may hold trauma or other strong feelings and experiences. I welcome clients sharing their experience of me and will often check in to see how our relationship is developing and if there are any issues between us that need tending. Working in this way both builds trust in our relationship and can also help you to identify relationship patterns that may be present in your other relationships. This may, in turn, support development and change in those relationships where there are issues and dynamics that are undesirable or stuck.
Above all, I work in a trauma-informed way that validates your experiences and supports understanding of how trauma impacts you and identification of what is needed to establish a sense of trust and safety in our relationship, in your body, where trauma often gets stuck, and in the wider world. Working in this way also promotes your strengths, capacities, personal choice and agency both in our work together and in life more broadly.
For me, the personal is political. I am an intersectional feminist, member of the Feminist Therapy Network, LGBTQIA+ affirmative therapist, member of Therapists against Conversion Therapy and Transphobia (TACTT) and take an anti-oppressive stance in my work. This means that I recognise the impact of systems of power and oppression on us all and see “pathology” or “dysfunction” as being located within the socio-economic and political structures, and the personal and professional settings and relationships in which we exist, rather than in the individual. In other words, context is everything and I work with you to think about how to resource yourself in this world and how to face discrimination and injustice in a way that feels affirming for you. I hold an awareness of my own power, privilege and marginalisation and of how these issues can impact our work together in their meeting of your power, privilege and marginalisation and I encourage you to explore with me how these dynamics are present in our relationship. I recognise how hard this can be to do and so will go at your own pace in this and all areas of the work, as centering your agency and choice is really important to ensuring you feel safe and heard.
My Therapeutic Values
In addition to the commitment, values and principles aid out in the BACP’s ethical framework, the following therapeutic values are really important to me:
- Being led by you, as the client;
- Accepting where you’re at and supporting you to grow and change if that is what you want;
- Working in collaboration, alongside and in solidarity with you;
- Affirming you and your experience and working with you for your own empowerment, whatever that may look like for you;
- Practising anti-oppressively and in a trauma-informed way;
- Prioritising our relationship as a foundation for the work and as a source for healing relational trauma;
- Being empathic, non-judgemental and congruent towards you and having unconditional positive regard for you;
- Honouring and supporting your whole self to flourish (emotional, physical, intellectual, erotic, political and spiritual).
- Bi- | Pansexual
- Kink - BDSM
- Queer
- Level 7 Diploma in Integrative Counselling from the Minster Centre
- Registered member of the British Association for Counsellors and Psychotherapists
- Trained in Wild Therapy
- Registered facilitator with Anna Freud holding mentalization-based Reflective Parenting groups
- Trained in Grief Tending in Community
| Award | Awarding body | Year of award |
|---|---|---|
Having worked in the voluntary sector throughout my professional life, I trained as a counsellor after my own experience of counselling, which radically changed my life. I have been working in mental health and wellbeing for almost a decade, managing and overseeing the provision of mental health services, delivering one to one counselling and holding groups.
I am a qualified integrative counsellor, with a level 7 Diploma in Integrative Counselling from The Minster Centre and draw on a variety of therapeutic theories and approaches in my work, so that I can support diverse clients experiencing a range of issues. I have also trained in Wild Therapy, supporting me to work outdoors, to enhance the experience and expression of our innate wildness and to explore our interconnection with other beings and ecosystems. I am a registered member of the British Association for Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP) and abide by their code of ethics.
I have provided counselling under DePaul’s service for young people aged 18-25, who are experiencing emotional distress, isolation and relationship difficulties and who have often experienced trauma. I love working with young people and appreciate how hard this phase of life can be, with its transition into adulthood and working out who you are in the world and what you want in life, often in the face many challenges, oppressive systems and experiences.
I have also provided counselling for Brighton Women’s Centre, counselling women who are survivors of trauma, abuse and bereavement. Working with these issues is very important to me, as I know from my own experience how they can can cut us off from living our lives fully and also how it is possible to restore ourselves to a whole-hearted, whole-bodied and whole-spirited life.
I am registered with Anna Freud as a practitioner who is qualified to hold mentalization-based reflective parenting groups. These groups support parents and carers to better understand the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of both themselves and their children, so as to reduce conflicts and improve parent-child relationships. I have held these groups for both kinship carers and for fathers whose partners are accessing perinatal mental health services and I have a particular interest in working with parents and carers who have either experienced trauma and emotional distress themselves or who have children who are experiencing the same.
I led a service for a local Mind that delivered emotional wellbeing and mental health services in schools and colleges for children and young people aged 5-25, alongside training, information and advice for teachers and parents. I then jointly managed Anna Freud’s service for children under 5, which focused on strengthening the parent-child relationship, as a means of supporting the socio-emotional development and wellbeing of babies and very young children. These jobs taught me a lot about childhood development and about the importance of supportive relationships and environments for children, which is something I really care about. In my work as a counsellor, supporting parents when they are struggling with their own wellbeing or with their relationship with their child(ren) is very important to me. I know how sensitive and difficult this can be and am committed to supporting parents gently and non-judgementally.
Having apprenticed with Grief Tending in Community, I am also a grief tender, and hold collective grief tending spaces for groups. Grief is a fundamental part of being human, of being hurt by and of loving both people and the world. I have personally found grief tending in community to be phenomenally powerful in tending to our whole person, body and soul, and in connecting with others in our shared love and pain.
Before this period in my life, I lived in the Middle East for 7 years, working in the humanitarian sector. This was a really formative time in my life and I was deeply influenced by the cultures and contexts in which I lived and hugely impacted by the wars, occupations and imperial forces in the region. I am committed to challenging colonial structures in the contexts in which I operate, including in myself. I am also experienced and enjoy working with refugees, migrants and people of mixed heritage and understand the trauma, challenges, strengths and growth that these experiences can bring.
- Attachment theory (Psychodynamic)
- Body psychotherapy
- Existential
- Feminist therapy
- GSRD therapy
- Humanistic
- Integrative
- Person-Centred
- Psychodynamic
- Psychosynthesis
- Relational
- Transactional Analysis
- Transpersonal
- Walk and talk therapy
- BDSM | Kink
- Bi- | Pansexual
- Consensual non-monogamy
- Cross-dresser
- Gay
- Lesbian
- Neurodivergent
- Non-binary | Genderqueer
- Queer
- Questioning
- Survivors of attempted conversion therapy
- Trans
- One to one
- No adaptation
- Adults
- Seniors (60+)
- Young adults (16-24)
- Online
- In Person
I offer a free, 15 minute phone chat before we start working together so that you can ask me any questions you may have about counselling and the way I work and to tell me about what you’re looking for. If you want to proceed, we will then have a 50-minute initial consultation session together, charged at the rate agreed per the fee structure below.
I offer one weekly online or outdoors slot for people on universal credit and/or other benefits. My fee per session for this slot is £5 and sessions are limited to 20, to allow others a chance to access this slot.
I offer a limited number of low cost sessions at £40 for those on low income or in student or caring roles, who often worry about finances, can’t afford to go on holiday or participate in paid leisure activities, and/or have debt. I have some fortnightly, online slots that may be available if you would otherwise not be able to access counselling.
I operate a sliding scale of £60 - £90 for the rest of my sessions and ask clients to decide what they can afford to pay, depending on how comfortably they can meet their basic needs, how much disposable income they have after they have paid for food, rent and bills, how accessible holidays and paid leisure activities are, and if they have any debt or conversely any savings or inheritance.
Other Practicalities
For online working, I will send you a Zoom link to join the session. Please ensure you have a confidential space to talk, a secure internet connection and a camera and microphone that works on your device.
Before the initial consultation session, I will email you a counsellor-client agreement, client information form and data protection information for you to read and consider. In the consultation session, we will discuss what brings you to counselling, what you hope to get out of it and how long you want the counselling to be. We will also decide together whether we feel like a good fit to continue working together.
Counselling is a big undertaking and I know how hard it can be to talk to a counsellor, so working with someone with whom you feel comfortable enough is really important and I encourage you to look around and speak to a few counsellors before making your decision.
After that, if we decide to proceed together, our first few sessions will be about getting to know each other and about understanding more about the issues you’re bringing to therapy, in the context of your history, life experiences, relationships and ways of viewing and understanding the world. Thereafter your sessions will be led by you and whatever it is you wish to discuss that session.
Sessions are 50 minutes and are held weekly, at the same time and day each week. Sessions may be fortnightly if finances are a barrier to access counselling.
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